Lou Krieger

Winning players make their opponents pay for the chance to draw for a card that might beat them. Anytime you have the best hand and your opponent can’t win the pot without improving, your job is to make it pricey for him.

Without a price to be paid to see another card, no hand is too much of a long shot. Even if the odds were 45-to-1 against your opponent—a situation that arises on the turn when there’s only one card in the deck that can help him—a free card gives him infinite odds to improve.

In fixed-limit hold’em, the balance between betting and checking can be confusing. Suppose we’re playing $6-$12 hold’em, and we’ve reached the turn, where you have a flush draw and I have a pocket pair of aces. You’ll win by making a flush. But if your draw fizzles out, we’ll assume there’s no other card you can catch that gives you a winning hand.

Following in the footsteps of the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC), France suspended Full Tilt’s license for the foreseeable future, which deepens the crisis faced by the deeply troubled poker company.

According to French regulators, Rekop Limited, Full Tilt’s French license holder, had its license suspended as a “precautionary” measure. The measure was required, according to the regulators, due to the dot.fr site’s inaccessibility following suspensions last week by the AGCC and Full Tilt’s need to find additional funds in order to operate.

This isn’t Full Tilt Poker’s month. First, it had to admit that it was no closer to repaying its US players despite the fact that its competitor, PokerStars, has refunded players’ deposits in full. Then it was hit with a public relations’ attack via a lawsuit by one of its main spokespeople, Phil Ivey. Now the seemingly defunct lawsuit brought against them by Clonie Gowen has been resurrected.

As you may recall, Gowen, a former “Team Full Tilt” member, had filed suit against Full Tilt Poker, its parent Tiltware, and various individuals including founder Raymond Bitar and co-owner Howard Lederer, for breach of contract, fraud and other claims arising out of her contention that they failed to pay her a promised 1% ownership interest in Full Tilt, allegedly worth as much as $40 million.

Betting is the essence of poker. We usually bet with the best hand and whenever we think a well-timed bluff will win the pot without murmur or protest from an adversary, even if he or she happens to have a slightly better hand right now.

Although one major bank account belonging to Full Tilt Poker was unfrozen in recent days, the company is still not paying back its American customers. Moreover, Full Tilt has failed to indicate when they will release any funds. Major figures in Full Tilt’s hierarchy, such as Howard Lederer, have not been seen since the events of Black Friday, and no one associated with the company is willing to speak on the record, with the exception of a recent statement regarding the release of funds that said, “We still do not have a specific timeframe for this.”

According to a report in eGaming Review, the US Department of Justice has unfrozen one bank account belonging to Full Tilt Poker (FTP), freeing up approximately $30 million owed to US players, but a firm date for repaying money to US players has not been set.

The unfrozen account, housed in the Bank of Ireland, is one of nine frozen in Ireland. A total of 76 accounts belonging to the three indicted poker sites were named in the Black Friday indictments of April 15.

Doylesroom.com was among 10 dot-com domains seized according to a May 23 statement issued by the US Attorney’s Office in Baltimore, MD. As a result of an undercover investigation into illegal gambling and money laundering, those named in an indictment include Darren Wright and David Parchomchuk of ThrillX, a Canadian software solutions provider, and Ann Marie Puig of BMX Entertainment, which is based in Cyprus and operates six online-gambling websites.

Eleven bank accounts registered in such diverse locations as Guam, North Carolina, Malta, Panama, Portugal and the Netherlands were also seized.

The indictments handed down by the Department of Justice against three online poker companies and their payment processors are just over a month old, and yet word comes out of New York tonight that the first of the eleven named defendants has already entered a guilty plea.

According to the Associated Press, Bradley Franzen pleaded guilty in a Manhattan court on Monday to conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and accepting funds in connection with illegal internet gambling. This information came to AP from Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, the lead prosecutor on the case.

With Pokerstars players reporting return of their deposits over the past two weeks, those who have money at Full Tilt Poker have been waiting for their returns to start coming in. Instead, one month after the DOJ handed down the indictments that closed Full Tilt to US players, those players are no closer to seeing any of their money.

There’s a guy who emails me frequently with poker questions. They’re usually along the line of, “What’s the smallest pair you would play under the gun in a no-limit game,” or “Would you raise from middle-position in a fixed limit game with K-J,” and “Can you win playing A-Q in early position?”